“Google has nearly completed work on a new version of Google Maps for the iPhone. Citing sources familiar with Google’s plans, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google is now field testing the app outside of Google. It should soon be ready for Google to submit to Apple for approval,” Eric Zeman writes for Informationweek. “Apple replaced Google Maps with its own mapping product. Embarrassingly for Apple, Apple Maps has been a complete failure.”

Zeman writes, “Denying Google Maps at this point would be opposite of everything Apple is already doing. It would be an obvious move against a competitor. It would make Apple look petty and pathetic in the eyes of many. Apple can’t say no.”

MacDailyNews Take: But, wait, isn’t Apple already seen as “petty and pathetic in the eyes of many” (idiots) for going to court to protect against the blatant, outright theft of their patented intellectual property?

Apple can say no and does routinely, yet we agree they’ll likely approve a Google Maps app, if it’s submitted, but not to look magnanimous. It’ll be a popular app for those who download apps (the number of people who don’t download apps is larger than most people think).

In the end, an app is just an app. Apple’s efficient, vector graphics-based Maps is the default, it’s intertwined with iOS, by far the world’s most profitable mobile operating system, and Apple’s Maps APIs are the ones that developers will be using going forward.

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58 Comments

Agreed, the issues have been resolved. The Eiffel Tower and the Hoover Dam render properly now and people have forgotten about mapgate and are enjoying the superior and faster vector based Apple maps with turn by turn directions. Sorry google, we don’t need you anymore.

Eiffel Tower in satellite still looks the same on my iPhone as it did September 20. Mind you it’s only in 3D where it looks bizarre; top-down view, Google Maps satellite isn’t much better, it’s just skewed differently.

Hoover Dam 3D is still messed up though (ie looks the same as it did in the articles from late September), with the Hoover Dam bypass bridge still falling right into the canyon.

Apple Maps is far from a failure, but it still lacks certain features and misses out on some details, particularly outside the US.
The nice things however are that it is already better in several respects as well, and a lot of improvement can be done on Apple’s server farm side, mostly without overhauling the Maps app at all.
Apple’s Maps app will just leapfrog Google’s offering as it is further perfected.

Once the initial furor died down, people realized that the new Apple Maps is superior to what they had and they forgot about the controversy. Most of the glaring issues it had upon release have been corrected now anyway. I know I most certainly will not be downloading the Google Maps app when it becomes available because I have absolutely zero need for it.

I have been using Apple map around silicon valley and it is fine. But we have a cabin in Utah that we visited last week. The ski resorts are open already! Folks I talked to up there have a game. They put their address in and drive to where it says they live. Whoever is fartherest off wins the bet. Turns out most have no trouble getting a plot, just that very few are in the right town. Even putting in 9 digit zip codes can put them in a wrong county. Apple should dump this mess and admit they are lousy cartographers.

OK here you go. I have a friend lives at 346 West Main St, Mt. pleasant, 84647. You will find that plots in Wales, Utah 12 miles away. Another lives In Salt Lake City. Try this: 3650 Constitution Drive, West Valley City, 84119. You will find it is not on Constitution Drive at all. I could give you 20 more in my contacts if you want.

We are waiting for Federico to respond….Fed? You there? Fed?
Anybody home?
I have owned three iPhones and three iPads and have seven Mac desktops and a laptop, but none of the iOS devices will be replaced until Apple straightens this out.

@CupertinoJoe: “I have a friend lives at 346 West Main St, Mt. pleasant, 84647. You will find that plots in Wales, Utah 12 miles away.”

No, it doesn’t.

Because the address you specified is ambiguous, Apple Maps asks you to choose between two alternatives. Choosing the first takes you right to the address in Mt. Pleasant. The second will take you to Wales.

Wrong. Both the Wales and Mt Pleasant plot incorrect. Look at the map, see mt. Pleasant Main street? North of the pin drop by many blocks. The Map plot is south of town out near the airport. It is closer than the Wales locatio but still miles off. Apple map cannot get one address correct In that town. I know, I have a cabin just 5 miles from town and was there last week.

Yes, the street address and zip code without the town name is ambiguous. Both towns have that street address and both are in the same zip code. Interestingly, searching in Google maps on my laptop for 346 Main St, mt. pleasant, UT 84647 also returns the 346 Main address in Wales, UT.

Yeah? So, how come when I decided to use Apple Maps to guide me to a place I’d never been before, a single farmhouse on a tiny lane on the south coast of England, it dropped a pin right by the entrance to their car park area, while Google Maps refused to even recognise the address, no matter what permutations I tried. Google would have been useless, as there’s no voice guidance. I’ll stick with CoPilot, anyway, as there’s no 3G or wifi available down there to access the map server for local guidance, but the drive down, 140 miles, was perfectly executed by Apple.

What irritates me most is that to this day my Garmin AND my TomTom will, on rare occasions, SHOW me on the GPS to take a right yet TELL me over the speaker to turn left (or something similar). And these GPS units are not free nor, quite often, are their monthly/quarterly/annual map updates.

See my examples of Utah errors above. Both of those plot perfectly in Google Maps as do the other 20 addresses in my contacts. I found as I drove around up there last week that the Apple Maps generally showed where I was pretty accurate, but searching for addresses was totally messed up. I checked all 20 of my contacts in Utah. All but one were right on with Google. Not a single one was correct in Apple Maps. How about you give me some accurate addresses, try Sanpete county where my cabin is.

Gees. If you had read my posts you would know I live in Cupertino. But I have a ski cabin in Utah. Great snow by the way. And regardless of that I would rather live in Utah than any state you live in. OK?